Route to Market & Supply Chain Blog

If you are a CEO or MD of an FMCG, Brewing, Pharmaceutical company with a perceived good reputation for service and you operate a Call Centre or Customer Service Desk then you should personally try calling it from time to time. I don’t know about…

If you are running an FMCG factory the least welcome pack sizes will be something like 50g sachets of washing powder or 50ml tubes of toothpaste, i.e. relatively slow filling and low capacity. In multinationals these small pack skus are likely to…

Everyone in multi-national companies will have experienced the “data request from head office”. Usually arriving at the most inconvenient time, with unclear instructions and no clear reason-why! These data collection campaigns are often managed by…

The car bounced over the dirt road of potholes and approached the expansive, looming warehouse building that was once so full of life and bustling activity. Paper and plastic fast–food litter gathered up by the breeze blew across the distribution…

If you ask people to list disasters that have seriously affected supply chains you will probably get answers including the usual suspects, e.g. earthquake, tsunami, flood, volcanic eruption etc. Rarely would you find snow in the list of answers yet…

You may recall I took a light-hearted look at the complexity of overpaid Premier League footballers and how they might be treated if they were skus in a business. There is a cost to having an sku on your books whether this is soup, a shampoo or a…

If you are honest you have probably sat bored in an airport lounge waiting for your inevitably delayed flight and listened in on a conversation. If the discussion topic is not one you are familiar with it can be as if you are listening to speech in…

Ok, now back on line after the holidays and some demanding project work. One of the first catch-up meetings I have had this year was with an FMCG MD. No name of course, but this is a medium sized player with a broad European base and I have…

I have been talking to a number of supply chain executives during the last few weeks and something of a theme has emerged. The theme is the need for highly skilled supply chain resource, available at short notice, with the flexibility to switch off…

Previously on S&OP. The Demand Review has taken place. The Supply Review followed on time and a mutual understanding reached. Despite considerable challenges in securing a date in the diary for all the key players the Pre-S&OP happened without…

The average job description will run to a few pages of A4. Even after you have read your own it may not be completely clear what you should be doing. Here I have tried to encapsulate a selection of supply chain roles and processes in just a few…

The majority of Supply Chain Director-level openings paint a picture of dynamic, forward thinking companies already operating at top performance and requiring you just to “keep the ball moving”. This is not always the case so I wonder how an advert…

Ok, I will admit to something. I started my career as an R&D type who helped bring FMCG products to the market. Nobody really knew how a product made the transition from bench top and pilot plant testing to the supermarket shelves. Somebody must…

Before Capello leads England to world cup glory in South Africa (you read it here second!) There is much to observe about his approach to leadership in the context of Supply Chain and S&OP in particular: Makes Decisions. At the end of the…